Who Are The Donkeys Of The Jews? The Reality of the Safavids Around The World - Iran Stories
14 July 2017If it wasn’t for the
Rafidah (Shia), the Ottomans would have conquered all of Europe!
The Major Powers in the west favoured the Safavids because they were an
obstacle to the Islamic expansion of the Sunni Ottomans i.e. they (Shia
Safavids) were one of the major causes why the Muslims couldn’t conquer
Europe. Ferdinand, the ambassador to the Austrian King remarked:
“Had it not been for the (Shi’ite) Safavids in Persia, we would have been
reading the Qur’an this day like the Algerians”
Meaning that his nation would have been conquered by the Ottoman Muslims. It
was the Safavid state that kept the Ottoman state busy with fighting the
Safavids, instead of the crusaders. The Safavids had never beaten their
western neighbours in a straight fight. Hence Safavid Persia and Europe formed
an alliance against the Sunni Ottomans. A dramatic example of this is the role
of the English engineer/adventurers, known as the Sherley brothers who helped
Shah Abbas create an indigenous musket and cannon industry to fight the
formidable Ottomans. Shah Abbas’ personal bodyguard were recruited from the
Armenians and the Georgians of the Caucasus. How true is the famous statement
of Shaykh Al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah who more than two centories before the
emergence of the Safavid dynasty said:
“The Rafidis are the donkeys of the Jews, they ride them for every fitnah”
[Ibn Taymiyyah, Minhaaj-us-Sunnah 1/20-21]
Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.
U.S. Conferred With Iran Before Iraq Invasion - Reports
In New York Times, Michael R Gordonmarch reported U.S. Conferred With Iran
Before Iraq Invasion
According to Gordonmarch, Senior American officials held confidential talks
with Iran about Iraq’s future in advance of the United States-led invasion to
topple Saddam Hussein, and secured a promise that the Iranian military would
not fire at United States warplanes that strayed into Iranian airspace,
according to a new book by a ranking Bush administration official.
The previously undisclosed meetings, which were held in Geneva with Mohammad
Javad Zarif, the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations and future foreign
minister, continued even after American troops seized Baghdad in April 2003.
“We wanted a commitment that Iran would not fire on U.S. aircraft if they
accidentally flew over Iranian territory,” Zalmay Khalilzad, a former
ambassador to Iraq, Afghanistan and the United Nations, wrote in the “The
Envoy,” being published this month by St. Martin’s Press.
“Zarif agreed,” he added. “We also hoped Iran would encourage Iraqi Shiites to
participate constructively in establishing a new government in Iraq.” Some
prominent Iraqi Shiite leaders who had opposed Hussein had long been supported
by Iran, which is the major Shiite power in the region.
But the Americans and Iranians had major differences over how to form a new
Iraqi government and deal with Tehran’s support for terrorism. In May 2003,
the Bush administration halted the dialogue after it accused Iran of harboring
leaders of Al Qaeda who were blamed for a terrorist attack that killed eight
Americans in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
More than a decade later, Mr. Khalilzad considers the failure to keep open a
continuous channel to Iran one of the great what-ifs of the Iraq war.
“I am convinced that if we had combined diplomatic engagement with forcible
actions, we could have shaped Iran’s conduct,” he wrote.
The book is being published as heated debate continues over the Obama
administration’s policy toward Tehran, including the terms of the nuclear
accord the United States and five other world powers negotiated with Iran.
The book by Mr. Khalilzad, a naturalized American who was born in Afghanistan
and earned a doctorate at the University of Chicago, offers new insight into
the debate over policy toward Iran within the Bush administration.
Whether there was real potential for a constructive dialogue with Iran about
Iraq during the Bush years has been much debated. Ryan C. Crocker, a veteran
diplomat, said that while officials from the two nations had productive
consultations over Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the
prospects for a similar discussion on postwar Iraq were greatly diminished
after President George W. Bush described Iran as a member of the “axis of
evil” in his January 2002 State of the Union address.
“The chance for a serious dialogue that might actually have led somewhere
pretty much ended with ‘axis of evil,’ ” said Mr. Crocker, who served as an
American envoy to Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries in the region.
But Mr. Khalilzad was eager to see if the United States could elicit
cooperation from Iran before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, and the White
House authorized him to meet with Mr. Zarif.
Accompanied by Mr. Crocker, Mr. Khalilzad informed Mr. Zarif that the Bush
administration wanted to establish a democratic government in Baghdad that
would be at peace with its neighbors — a formulation that was intended to
signal that the United States did not plan to expand its military operations
into Iranian territory.
Mr. Zarif, however, had his own ideas on how postwar Iraq should be governed.
He favored a quick handover to Iraqi exiles, argued that Iraqi security
institutions should be rebuilt from the ground up, called for the extensive
purging of former members of Hussein’s Baath Party and opposed an American
occupation, Mr. Khalilzad wrote.
That approach, which appeared designed to magnify Iran’s influence inside
Iraq, differed radically from Mr. Khalilzad’s strategy to form an interim
Iraqi government that included Iraqis who had remained in the country during
Hussein’s rule, and not just leaders in exile. Nor did Mr. Khalilzad favor
sweeping purges of Baath Party members.
When the issue of terrorism was on the table in a May 2003 meeting, Mr. Zarif
asked the United States to hand over leaders of the Mujahedeen Khalq, an
Iranian opposition group known as the MEK, whom Hussein had given refuge in
Iraq. Mr. Khalilzad, in turn, complained that Iran was harboring Qaeda
officials, including Osama bin Laden’s son.
That prompted the Iranians to “air the possibility of a direct exchange — MEK
leaders for Al Qaeda leaders,” Mr. Khalilzad wrote. The Bush administration
rejected the notion and then shut down the diplomatic channel that month after
it linked the terrorist attack in Riyadh to Qaeda leaders in Iran.
Mr. Zarif did not respond to emails seeking comment.
After being named ambassador to Iraq in 2005, Mr. Khalilzad continued to argue
privately for opening a channel to Iran.
Iraqi officials who traveled to Tehran told the American envoy that Iran was
open to talking, and there was an occasion in 2006 during which American and
Iranian policies appeared to overlap, Mr. Khalilzad asserts: Both countries
concluded that the ineffectual Ibrahim al-Jaafari needed to be replaced as
prime minister. Mr. Khalilzad wrote that Qassim Suleimani, the head of Iran’s
paramilitary Quds force, secretly traveled to Baghdad to deliver the message
that Mr. Jaafari had to go.
Mr. Khalilzad wrote that during a meeting of the National Security Council, he
persuaded Mr. Bush that he should be authorized to open a dialogue with the
Iranians.
Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of a Shiite party with close ties to Tehran,
traveled to Iran and urged Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, to
resume the talks. The Iranian leader agreed, and the Iranians assembled a team
drawn from their Foreign Ministry and security agencies for the Baghdad-based
talks, which an Iranian official publicly said Iran would attend.
Despite the high-profile nature of the Iranian delegation, Mr. Khalilzad said,
he planned to focus on Iraq and ignore Iranian efforts to draw him into a
discussion of a broader foreign policy agenda.
“For reasons that remain unclear to me, Washington did an about-face and
canceled the meeting at the last minute,” Mr. Khalilzad wrote. “Khamenei,
Hakim informed me, concluded from the incident that the Americans could not be
trusted.”
Eventually, Mr. Khalilzad notes, the administration authorized “carefully
circumscribed talks on Iraq,” which he and later Mr. Crocker pursued in
Baghdad, but the discussions were not productive.
Philip D. Zelikow, who served as the State Department counselor at the time,
said he was not aware of the National Security Council meeting that Mr.
Khalilzad cited, but argued that the conditions in 2006 were not propitious
for successful talks.
By 2005, State Department officials were becoming increasingly concerned that
Iran was supplying Shiite militias with powerful improvised explosives and
other weapons to attack American troops.
Mr. Zelikow argued that it would have made little sense to open talks with
Iran until the United States was prepared to mount a serious crackdown on the
Shiite militias and the Iranian network that was supporting them. That did not
happen until 2007, when Mr. Bush authorized an increase of American troops and
Gen. David H. Petraeus and Mr. Crocker were sent to Baghdad, he added.
“Until then, why bother talking to the Iranians about this issue if there was
no muscle behind it?” Mr. Zelikow said.
But Mr. Khalilzad insists in his book that he favored tougher action against
Iran in parallel with diplomacy, which led to the detention of a senior
Iranian Quds force officer in Baghdad in December 2006, three months before
Mr. Khalilzad wound up his tour there as ambassador.
The Bush administration, he wrote, “never authorized the kind of continuous
engagement that might have shaped Iran’s conduct.”
A version of this article appears in print on March 7, 2016, on page A6 of the
New York edition with the headline: U.S. Talked With Iran About Iraq, Book
Says. -- New York Times
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